Fertilizer production in MENA have increased at a CAGR of 3.5% in the last seven years, against the world CAGR of 2.8%. The region’s share in the world’s total capacities is now 12%. br /br /The major reasons for the increase in capacity are needless to say the ample availability of gas in the region and abundance of raw materials such as Potash and Phosphate, supported by high demand for fertilizer from the South East Asian regions. br /br /Our prefered name in the region is the Arab Potash Company in Jordan.

Friday November 21, 2008 Navivest

It might still be too early to call, but all indications are that we will finally get that stock market rebound that we have been looking for, for three days now on this blog.

Stocks are up in Europe, oil and gold and trading higher, we got good news from Dell overnight and quite frankly, while this IS a bear market and there is probably more downside, in the near-term, we are in very oversold territory.

Indications are that the Dow will open up about 200+ points. We do have a few hours before the open, but we should get a nice pop at the open.

If that happens, with stocks like Citigroup ( C) now trading below $5, we will see investors buying and short sellers covering, so we should see a meaningful rally.

And if we do get the rally, it will be a free for

...

Another company with a sizeable buyback program in place and massive cash flow... Potash (POT) This was one of the hedge funds largest holdings so many of the previous holders should be out of the stock by now... I'm taking it from a 1.1% stake to 3.5% of fund, buying just over $59. If the market falls off the ... ahem... pot, we'll cut back around $55 since the double bottom will obviously be no longer there. This is a buy on technical condition alone. Please note these are my first long side purchases in scale for many weeks, coming from a position of heavy cash. I've also cut back short exposure significantly on that first thrust down to below S&P 780 as my target of 2002 lows of 770 was close enough. If we breach back below to 760s ...

The junior bourse broke through the 2002 lows but the big board managed a late day rally to finish in the black during Thursday trading on the Canadian markets.

For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange added 1.03%, while the TSX Gold Index fell 4.1% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, lost 4.73% with the declining issuers out pacing the advancers by a 650 to 266 margin on volume of 190 million shares traded.

Teck Cominco (NYSE:TCK) tabled earnings of C$432 million, or C$0.97 per share in the third quarter of 2008, compared with C$495 million, or C$1.16 per share tallied in the same period a year earlier. The bottom line was hit by lower copper and zinc prices with higher coal operating profits limiting the impact. Teck ended the day down C$1.78 at C$12.54.

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (NYSE:POT) saw its third quarter

...

Since the belatedly radical action taken by the UK and Eurozone governments just over a week ago to directly recapitalize their key banks and guarantee interbank lending, a strategy now replicated from the US to South Korea, measures of credit market stress have slowly improved. In fact, this 'normalisation' is now accelerating. The TED spread is down to just over 3% today, from 3.59% Friday; the two-year swap spread down to 111 from 122 (and having peaked at over 160), LIBOR is down to 4% and the yield on 3 mth Treasuries is up to near 1% (from zero in the depths of despair we reached a couple of weeks back). I'm playing this trend by being short the VIX. All these numbers, while still clearly abnormal, speak of a very gradual recovery from the extreme risk aversion that has paralysed credit markets in recent weeks. ...

In September I took a look at a href="http://zignalsblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/buffett-way.html"Warren Buffett's/a stock holdings. In this post I will look at George Soros's stocks. The information was pulled from a href="http://www.stockpickr.com/port/George-Soros/"Stockpickr/a and is ehhh... not the most up to date given his third greatest holding was that bastion of financial security, Lehmans. The a href="http://www.marketfolly.com/2008/08/checking-in-on-warren-buffett-berkshire.html"13F/a on which the holdings were pulled were current for June 20th of this year - I suspect things have changed a little since.... br /br /span class="fullpost"Topping his holdings is Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. (strongPBR/strong). The stock has given back nearly all of its 2007 run up but is currently trading at support of a modest up trend dating back to 2005. The stock is also trading near support of a broadening wedge which encompassed the crash of 2008. The stock yields a disappointing 0.30% but the company did report a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/petrobras-reaches-record-oil-production/story.aspx?guid={AC06D002-C3BA-44F0-B338-F783A58EE8D9}siteid=yhoof"record oil production/a for September. br /br ...

Monday:Economic Leading Indicators (-0.3%)Earnings Eaton (ETN), Halliburton (HAL), Mattel (MAT), American Express (AXP), Everest (RE), Hexcel (HXL), Logitech (LOGI), Netflix (NFLX), SanDisk (SNDK), Texas Instruments (TXN)Tuesday:Economic NAEarnings 3M (MMM), Caterpillar (CAT), Biogen (BIIB), BlackRock (BLK), Coach (COH), Fifth Third (FITB), M&T Bank (MTB), OptionsXpress (OXPS), US Banc (USB), Stanley (SWK), Broadcom (BRCM), CH Robinson (CHRW), Cree (CREE), Cerner (CERN), E*Trade (ETFC), Qlogic (QLGC), Sigma Aldrich (SIAL), VMware (VMW), XL Cap (XL), Yahoo (YHOO), Tupperware (TUP)Wednesday:Economic Weekly CrudeEarnings Air Prod (APD), Alleghany (ATI), AT&T (T), Boeing (BA), Conoco (COP), EMC (EMC), CNX (CNX), Genzyme (GENZ), McDonalds (MCD), Merck (MRK), WellPoint (WLP), Allstate (ALL), Amazon (AMZN), Amgen (AMGN), Baidu (BIDU), Chipotle (CMG), Citrix (CTXS), Core Labs (CLB), Lam R (LRCX), Nutrisystem (NTRI), Pulte (PHM), Terex (TEX), Ryland (RYL), Seagate (STX)Thursday:Economic Weekly ClaimsEarnings Altria (MO), Bunge ...